What's it going to take to make things change round here? If events of the last few weeks and months haven't triggered a massive upheaval in the way we organise ourselves, then what will? What does it need, blood on the streets?

Nine months ago, the financial crisis seemed certain to bring a revolution in our economy. Surely those bankers who had driven off a cliff, taking our livelihoods with them, would no longer rake in telephone number salaries as they played roulette with the national wealth. Change had to be on the way.

The same went for our political representatives. Surely after being exposed as piggies unable to keep their snouts from the taxpayer-funded trough, they would be shamed into changing their behaviour. They would have to stop their old games and grow up.

But look what's happened. The new boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland is set to trouser just short of £10m a year. We can't blame "market forces": RBS is 70% owned by the government. The new boss's salary comes out of your pay packet and mine. A matter of months after a global howl of outrage, when the world seemed ready to bury the neoliberal regime of runaway pay, we have returned to business as usual.

In politics, things look a bit better. Gordon Brown today promised "root and branch" reform of expenses, so that MPs will no longer be in charge of reimbursing themselves. There's a new speaker, too, elected on a promise of change.

Yet one can hardly feel confident. If the spirit of change was real, then MPs would have felt too ashamed to release the rhapsody in black that was last week's redacted expenses. And sheer embarrassment would have prevented Brown from announcing a closed-door Iraq inquiry just as he hails a new era of transparency. But the spirit of secrecy prevailed.

John Bercow's election is similarly dis­couraging, and not only because he used his inaugural address to empathise with those MPs feeling "very vulnerable". It is the manner of his elevation, not the man himself, that is troubling. He was the beneficiary of a classic Westminster game, with Labour MPs choosing a Tory who would get under the nose of other Tories. They weren't seized by a collective desire to change their ways, but rather by a partisan wheeze. They had returned to politics as usual.

Outside, the nation watches this and the megabucks paid to the RBS boss, and either feels its veins bulge with rage or – more worrying – its shoulders shrug with resignation, despairing at our society's apparent inability to change. It's not just these latest examples. It's a House of Lords whose need for radical reform has been discussed for an entire century, but which still remains intact. It's a voting system regularly lamented for its unfairness, but which stands immutable. It's a set of monarchic powers still used by a prime minister able to rule like an 18th century king.

There was a time when this impeturbable continuity was part of our charm. Other nations might lose their heads, with their coups and revolutions, but we sailed on, unchanged. We could absorb the swell without losing our balance. The church clock stood at ten to three and there was honey still for tea.

Now that feels less reassuring than stifling – the choking, stale sensation that we can rant and we can rave, but nothing will ever budge.

I spoke yesterday with the veteran historian Eric Hobsbawm, who at 92 has seen his share of change. He offers two notes of caution. First, there have in fact been enormous shifts in British life – he cites attitudes to sex and homosexuality – but these have been cultural, rather than political. Second, there is not "such a dramatic contrast" between us and our European neighbours as we might ­suspect: true, the French have a ­revolutionary habit, taking to the streets, but they are more the exception than the rule.

Yet, even without direct action, other nations do seem able to change; the US visibly renewed itself last year. Why not us? Our stagnant political system is a symptom, but also a cause. A government with a huge majority sees little incentive to change the rules; a government with a small one is too weak. (See Tony Blair in 1997 and Brown now.)

More subtly, it's also a function of a first-past-the-post system that puts all the focus on as few as 20,000 floating voters in must-win marginal seats. The desperate desire to retain their support makes politicians fearful of bold action: witness Brown's admission, in his revealing weekend interview with the Guardian, that he did not take a tougher line on the banks because he didn't dare depart from "the mainstream."

But there are larger forces at work, too. It's striking that the British left organised street protests against the war in Gaza in January – an event over which it could have no direct influence – and yet made no equivalent effort over either the banks or MPs' expenses, even though those were scandals in its own country. This might be indicative of a lack of confidence, a tacit admission that the left no longer has a coherent, overarching world view to offer as an alternative. Communism once played that role, as did social democracy. But that latter idea rested, says Hobsbawm, on the premise of a state that could control what happened on its own territory, at least economically. Globalisation changed all that, making national governments look powerless. "So social democracy has gone to the dogs, too."

There are more immediate explanations for the loss of faith in the possibility of change. Many cite the mass demonstrations against the Iraq war in February 2003: if a million people on the streets didn't make a difference, then nothing will. That logic is flawed – in a democracy, decisions are not made according to crowd size – but it has had its effect.

The media surely play a role too, and not only a Daily Mail that tells Britons "public life is a sewer and nothing will ever get better", as one senior MP puts it. The problem is a media that can build up a fury so intense, it cannot be sustained. Anger at the bankers was boiling – until it gave way to rage at MPs' expenses. The nature of media interest, with its thirst for novelty, is that it moves on. And yet the work of changing society is a long haul.

A counterintuitive thought: is it ­possible that the vast range of outlets, the blogs and phone-in shows, gives people so many chances to let off steam, it prevents a head of steam reaching sufficiently lethal levels? Politicians react to pressure – yet the British pressure cooker has too many safety valves.

Of course, a leader armed with serious political will can make things happen: Thatcher is the exemplar. In the meantime, there are other, more modest remedies. Tony Wright, the cerebral backbencher tasked by Brown with generating urgent reform proposals, wants a standing democracy commission, "one that will still be there after the 24-hour frenzy has passed". It could grapple with the biggest reforms, those that would crack open our congealed politics, starting with a fair voting system.

But that will not solve our whole problem. We have a larger task, one that cannot be delegated away. The very first step is believing that change is possible – even when all the evidence points the other way.